


Hope

by starlight_and_seafire



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Fluff, Life After War, Minor Finn/Rose Tico
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 01:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_and_seafire/pseuds/starlight_and_seafire
Summary: In the space of a single day with his five-year-old daughter, Poe is reminded of what he fought for . . . and why.





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Credit goes to sunburnracing for the name of Poe and Rey's daughter, it was just too perfect not to use in this story. Thanks so much for your wonderful idea!

“Luna! C’mon, let’s get this started,” Poe says excitedly, clapping his hands as he walks into the pale green bedroom occupied by his five-year-old daughter.

Luna just throws him a _look_ over her shoulder, the same one he’s seen on her mother too many times, when Poe is acting a fool.

He’s too fond of that look to be anything but amused. “BB, can you come help us out?” He shouts just loud enough to be heard, and a moment later, the little droid comes rolling into the room.

“Your Aunt Rose and Uncle Finn will be here in a few hours. Don’t you want to make your room nice and clean so you can show it off to them? I know Aunt Rose would really like to see your flight sim and x-wing sketches.”

Luna perks up as she always does at the mention of her Aunt Rose, their relationship being cemented in the long hours Luna has spent curled up into Rose’s side being told stories of Rebellion and Resistance heroes when Rose has come to visit their ranch on Yavin IV.

To be fair, Poe and Rey both tell Luna stories of the war too, though their stories tend towards the first Rebellion as opposed to the war they fought in, the memories still lingering far too close to the surface for casual recollections with their young daughter. But they tell her of the fight against Darth Sidious and Darth Vader and the Empire, skimming past the violence and the terror and despair for now, telling her just enough so that she will always know that evil can be fought, can be triumphed over, as long as hope survives and the fight continues.

But now, in the sunny early afternoon light, nothing gets her moving as fast as a mention of Aunt Rose, and in the blink of an eye she’s thrown down her handheld flight simulator and dashed to stand in front of him in the middle of the room.

He can’t even begin to be jealous of that reaction, as glad as he is to have both Finn and Rose in her life. He glances down at BB-8, pats him on the head before asking, “Why don’t you play something upbeat for all of us, BB?”

The little droid whirrs in thought for a moment before upbeat pop music starts filtering through the air, and together he and Luna practically start flying around the room, picking up toys and clothes, arranging things on shelves, and making the bed. At one point, Poe picks her up, letting her stretch out in his arms, and he makes vrooming noises as she extends her own arms and they pretend she’s an x-wing, like the one parked in their yard. She readies her weapons array – or in this case, a feather duster – and takes out the dusty enemy combatants that line the top of her bookshelf.

Poe has to set her down quickly before he sneezes loudly three times in a row, but her smile remains painted on her face and her laughter rings in his ears long after.

By the time they finish her room, she’s happy enough to follow him around the house and help out with the few remaining chores.

“What time do they get here?” She asks, as she helps him fold some blankets in the guest room, her little arms clumsily assisting much to Poe’s amusement.

He glances at the clock. “They should be in before dinner. Probably three more hours or so? Your mom will be home a little before that, once classes are done at the temple,” he says, grinning at the happy little jig his daughter dances at the mention of her mother. He goes to place the extra blankets in the closet, but accidentally knocks off a bundle sitting on the top shelf, sending its contents to the floor.

Luna comes over to help him gather everything together again. But while he gathers a variety of cords and tassels and other knickknacks, she pauses as she holds up an item for closer inspection. It’s a soft black cap topped off with a square board, the top of it adorned with colorful decorations and drawings. He grins as she examines it, before she quickly grabs a second one that laid near them.

Finally, she glances up at him, practically giddy, exclaiming, “These look like mine!”

“Yeah, they sure do. I got mine when I graduated from school here and then when I graduated from the Academy before joining the Republic Navy,” and he swallows quickly, pushing down the lingering sadness that always comes when he thinks of the Academy and the Republic Navy. The First Order’s destruction of Hosnian Prime took with it more than a few people he considered close friends, including faculty and staff and heroes of the Rebellion who were teaching the next generation.

“But yours are decorated?” She asks, almost a little confused as she tilts the board around to look at it closer.

“It was a bit of a tradition for the graduates to decorate it with things that were important to them or something that was meaningful, however they wanted, really.”

She looks thoughtful as she considers what Poe said. She has his naval academy graduation cap in her hands, tracing her finger over the initials of his parents, Kes Dameron and Shara Bey, and then along the lines of a rudimentary sketch of the Force Tree, the same one that to this day sits just on the other side of the field nearer his father’s house. A drawing of an A-Wing filled a third corner of the cap, and she examines it closely before looking up at him. “Why didn’t we get to decorate our caps?”

On Yavin IV, the youngest kids, the four- and five-year old’s, were schooled separately before joining the other children at a larger school near the center of the village. He thinks back to the little graduation ceremony he and Rey had attended with the other families a few weeks ago, where the children, clad in caps and gowns, had paraded across a little stage as their teacher proudly announced their names.

He had clapped heartily as he watched Luna practically strut across the stage in front of the crowd and proudly shake her teacher’s hand as she grabbed her certificate, only pausing from his cheering to dab at the corners of his eyes when she had turned to wave at them. He leaned into Rey then, feeling her warmth along his side as she leaned back, feeling emotional at seeing how far his family had come in the last five years.

But despite the children’s artwork lining the walls of the room, the caps and gowns were sadly lacking in decoration. “I don’t know why. Maybe we should suggest it for next year’s graduates?”

For a brief moment she looks sad, and Poe scrambles for something to distract her, to make her happy again, cause if there’s something - anything - he could do to make his daughter happy, he’ll do it, but before he can even come up with an idea, his daughter’s eyes alight and she looks at him, and –

“Dad! We still have my cap, right? Can we decorate it? I know just what I’ll put on it, and then we can show Aunt Rose and Uncle Finn, and we have the tape of the ceremony too, right, we can show it to  them,” and finally she trails off, slightly breathless from the speed of her speech, and gazes up at him, her face so hopeful.

It’s a fantastic idea, and he tells her so. She practically screeches she’s so excited, and she runs off, flying out of the guest room so quickly he’s thinking some of the modifications on his x-wing would be jealous.

He puts the box of his graduation memorabilia back in the closet and sets off after her. He finds her and BB-8 digging through a container of art supplies, and he goes to grab the little cap and gown she had worn at her ceremony.

The next few hours are spent in a daze of glitter and paint, and Poe’s grateful that he wasn’t wearing anything nicer, anything that he would’ve warn to teach classes or take meetings in, as he’s now covered in the same glitter and paint that currently adorns Luna’s cap.

In one corner, she had lovingly sketched out the figure of an x-wing with the same orange and black color scheme that Poe had always carefully painted onto his ships whenever he had a chance (there was one ship, his first following their escape from Crait, that was blue and white, and while Poe was grateful for even having a ship at one of the Resistance’s lowest points, it had never sparked that same sense of joy as when he had the chance to make a ship his own).

In another corner, she’s drawn an Adenium obesum - a desert rose – bright pink and red flowers extending from its stems, and next to it, Rey’s green lightsaber. A desert rose, bought at a street market on Naboo, was the first flower Poe had ever presented to Rey before they had even started dating, when he had brought it back from a mission and stammered to her, in uncharacteristic fashion, that it reminded him of her.

She practically knocked him over kissing him when he gave her that flower, and they started dating right after. Ever since, whenever he’s had the chance, he’ll bring a desert rose back to Yavin IV to give to her. Her reaction has never changed.

So, now, more often than not, Rey can be seen taking care of the various Adenium obesum plants that remain around their house, carefully instructing Luna on how best to tend to them. Together, Rey and Luna have filled the house with their color, the plants flourishing under their care.

In a third corner, there’s a sketch of BB-8, its round body a little more roly-poly than usual, a rhinestone sitting in the place of its photoreceptor. BB-8 had watched carefully as she had set the little gem in place, and practically cooed in happiness when her drawing was complete.

Now, she sits with the orange marker between her teeth, gazing thoughtfully at the empty space in the last remaining corner of her cap.

She’s been staring at the space for so long now, that he almost wants to ask what’s on her mind, but he’s also loathe to break her concentration. He’s seen moments of genius come from this child, has been enthralled with the way her mind works since the moment she was born, and wonders where her mind will take her now.

Before he comes to a decision whether to speak, her voice breaks into his thoughts. “What was that drawing on your cap?”

“Which one?” He asks, first thinking back to the sketches on the cap from when he had graduated from the local school, the word _FREEDOM_ in bold, bright orange letters in the center surrounded by little doodles.

“The one on your navy hat,” she says, and instantly he knows which image she’s talking about. The hat with his parents’ initials, the Force Tree, the A-Wing, and in the last corner . . .

“It’s a starbird. It was the symbol the Rebel Alliance used when they fought against the Empire.”

The thoughtful look remains on her face as she continues staring at the corner of the cap. Finally, she looks up at Poe. “What does it mean?”

There are a million things it stands for, he thinks, a million things he could tell her about it. He could tell her about how it was first formed and the early days of the insurgency. He could tell her about the brave fighters who died on Scarif, who died in the campaigns against the first and second Death Stars, the heroes and leaders who fought and rebuilt and fought again, the wins and the losses in the fight against tyranny, all in an effort to bring peace and freedom to the galaxy.

He’s not sure how to explain all this to his daughter. So, finally, he settles on what that starbird means to him.

“Hope,” he says. “The starbird means hope.”

She smiles at him like he’s given her the galaxy, and a moment later he’s pulling up an image of the starbird on his datapad, and she’s got her tongue sticking out between her lips as she carefully scrutinizes the image before drawing its shape onto her cap.

Finally, it’s done, and she throws her arms around his neck to hug him.

Poe relishes in the hug, all the while his mind flashes back to a conversation he had with his father when he was young. Poe’s seen the worst the galaxy can offer, been tortured for hours, seen his friends die in front of him, seen planets subjected under the cruel heel of the First Order. Now, his greatest fear for his daughter is the same his father had for him – that the war they had fought would all be for nothing.

He kisses his daughter on the forehead and promises to set the cap safely aside to dry – _promises that he’ll do his best to make sure peace stuck around this time_ , he thinks but doesn’t say – and sends her to get herself cleaned up before Finn and Rose arrive.

He starts clearing the table, setting the art supplies back in the box, when he hears the rustle of noise behind him.

He turns, and his wife is leaning against the doorframe, her eyes soft and peaceful. He’s so grateful when he sees her like this, knows when most people see her, her eyes are sharp and alert, in a way that speaks of her Jedi training, and probably a little more so of her time on Jakku just surviving. But he gets to see her like this, and he’s so, so glad that she feels safe, peaceful even, around him and their family.

“She’s so much like you, you know,” she says.

“How so?” He asks, and he’s powerless to resist her, always drawn into her orbit, even now, like always, and he walks over, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to see how proficient you are with vials of glitter. You’ve been holding out on me, Poe Dameron,” she says, her voice teasing.

She pushes his curls back from his forehead, running her hand through his hair until it rests on the nape of his neck. He closes his eyes in pleasure at the touch, and they rock back and forth in their hug for a moment.

Rey’s voice is soft when she breaks the silence, and Poe’s eyes flutter open to meet hers. “She’s warm and kind, and always tries to do what’s right. Will do almost anything to bring a little light into someone’s life. And you show her how to do it.”

Poe is struck speechless for a moment at the thought. He’s a little unsure how to respond, until finally he settles on the truth.  “You make my life better. Brighten every day, the both of you. My sun and moon.”

She gives him a tender kiss on the lips, but the moment is broken when her datapad alerts her to an incoming message. After a quick glance, Rey’s face breaks out into a smile. “They’ll be here in half an hour.”

After that it is the last mad rush to finish cleaning up (as much as they can with a five-year-old in the house) and get food on the stove.

Poe hears their ship land in the clearing, and he’s already eager to hear about their adventures, the traveling the two have been partaking in, the meetings Finn has been involved with in ensuring former Stormtroopers who had broken free of their programming were properly reintegrated into society and treatment given to the brainwashed soldiers. Poe still serves as an advisor to the New Republic, though ever since Luna had first started toddling around, he’s travelling off-world much less (at least, for extended periods of time). He still manages to get his feet off the ground by helping the local defense forces and conducting flight training, but he can’t deny that he’s eager to catch up with his best friend and hear about their travels.

In a few short minutes, he sees Finn and Rose coming up the lane, and he and Rey run outside to greet them, all of them practically tackling each other in a four-way hug. But of course their speed is nothing compared to that of a five-year-old child eager to see her favorite aunt and uncle once again, and he sees Luna come sprinting out of their home, quicker than lightening and wet hair flying behind her, burrowing her way between them to wrap her scrawny arms around Rose and Finn.

Rose and Finn carry her between them on the way in, and he sees the way Rey cocks her head inquisitively between them, the way Finn supports Luna so that Rose wouldn’t be carrying too much weight, and he grins, excited at the prospect of their future announcement.

Still, while Poe and Finn bring dinner to the table, Luna stands in front of Rose and lets Rose braid her wet hair back into twin pig tails. They fall back into conversation and it feels like they’ve never been apart, and everything is so warm and pleasant that the war and all its traumas seem to fade away into nothing but an unpleasant footnote in his otherwise charmed life.

He knows the fear and the anger and the sadness will come back, that the memories will never fade away completely. He’s still plagued by nightmares sometimes, and he knows the rest are, too. He’s held Rey when she’s woken up sobbing with the terror of her final fight with Kylo Ren and his knights at the forefront of her mind, the memory of the battle where she was the only one left standing cutting her to the quick. He’s spent hours late at night chatting with Finn on the comm when neither could sleep, the ghosts of their comrades who died in battle lingering too close to let them sleep peacefully. He’s seen Rey and Rose work in silence, tinkering over some mechanical problem, when the memories make it difficult to speak, and while they may not be able to fix all the wounds the war left behind, the least they could do is fix the problem beneath their hands.

But for now, at least, he can leave that fear behind. Cause his dad sits to one side of him, his wife to the other, and his best friends in the galaxy – Finn and Rose and BB-8 – sit around him, hooting and cheering while his daughter swaggers across the living room in a cap and gown, reenacting her first-year graduation to the delight of her family and godparents.

She proudly shows them her cap, its decorations painstakingly drawn onto the board. Rey sees the desert rose and leans into him a little more as Luna explains why she chose each and every symbol.

And when asked why she chose the starbird, she just grins that toothy grin, and says, “Cause it means hope.”

He’ll do whatever he can to ensure that light and goodness will remain - _will prosper_ \- in the galaxy, to ensure that evil will never be able to gain a foothold again. Like his father before him, his greatest fear is that their fight will have been for nothing. But as he looks around him at the most important things in his galaxy, he realizes his greatest fear has nothing on hope.


End file.
